Harvest


Under a strawberry moon
the earth, deceived,
in the glow of its youth
grows old before its time:

too soon the harvest comes
of peaches and plums
berries ripe with the blood
of spring

how soon the summer heat
returns
how soon the honeyed dew of May
dissolves— 

soon the aphids feed
before the winter’s chill
and die themselves
upon December’s vine.





In My Apple Days


I bit into an apple
and it became a morning
at my home so far away.

It tasted of the fields
dusted with the dew
of the rising sun    

tasting of the sun itself 
and innocence lost behind stone barns
In the heat of a summer’s night.

I tasted another
with the flesh of angels
dancing on my tongue.

I bit into it once again
to taste the apple of my days
long gone.





The Red Wheelbarrow
(with a nod to W.C. Williams)


It is difficult to say
how much more depends
on a red wheelbarrow
glazed with rain
beside white chickens
than on the rain
or the chickens
in their coops
waiting to be slaughtered
for a meal.